For some reason, it seems that there is a hit piece per day being put out against Zeronocense since the original announcement that we were going to proceed forward with an offering.

Unfortunately for the individuals that are participating in the defamation, these false and inaccurate claims will be met with legal action.

While it may seem lucrative to post sensational articles that garner initial attention, this is not a fruitful strategy long-term as it will only engender lawsuits, DMCA takedown requests and other similar actions that will permanently harm the brand of those that are engaged in said activity.

Addressing AMBCrypto

Recently, an individual named ‘Priya’, from AMBCrypto reached out to Zerononcense under the guise of ‘gathering information’ for a story (see below):

The individual asked several questions about the Zerononcense offering, which were answered in succession, without equivocation.

Evidence was given to Priya such as:

Retainer Agreements

E-mails

PMs from personal conversations

Names

Dates

And much more.

However, it appears that none of these details were able to make it into Priya’s over-sensationalized hitpiece against Zerononcense.

Behold, the piece of ‘journalism’ published by Priya under the AMBCrypto brand is presented below:

“People are angry that a young, black guy is raising money in this space and that I don’t have a kiss ass of Venture Capital firms or play by their rules to do it either,” said the aggravated James Edwards aka CryptoMedication to AMBCrypto. This statement came in hours after Olta Andoni explicitly stated that …

Unpacking the Various False Claims Made in This Piece

The sensationalized title of the article is just the prequel to the series of dramatized lies and half-truths that this piece is riddled with:

What ‘troubled waters’ would Zerononcense be in? And what ‘accusations’ of misrepresentation is this author referring to?

Guess we’ll find out as we read through this piece!

What is interesting is that this is the quote that Priya decided to begin the article with, when there was a slew of information that was dumped in private message directly to Priya (see below):

As one can see above, these screenshots are just a brief example of the messages that were sent to Priya proving, beyond a doubt, that Zerononcense had indeed received legal representation from Ziliak law firm (another issue entirely that will be addressed in a separate article).

Priya was provided with the actual legal retainer between Zerononcense and Ziliak as well as additional correspondence between Zerononcense and Olta Andoni and her colleague, Jesse Hudson.

In addition, Zachary Ziliak, the head of the law firm itself, had reached out to Zerononcense to attempt to repair the already damaged-beyond-repair relationship between Zerononcense and his law firm — and that e-mail was also sent to Priya.

So why would she omit all of that information in favor of a quote that states that Zerononcense’s CEO and owner believes that it is being targeted as a result of the skin color of the owner of the brand and, more importantly, because of the content that is being published by the owner of Zerononcense?

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to us either, but let’s keep moving forward.

Commentary on the Offering

Notice the phrase, ‘a whopping $1 million’.

When did $1 million become ‘whopping’ in the crypto space?

Are we in the same space?

Let’s rewind for a second.

IEO Fundraising Throughout 2019

On June 28th, 2019, Trustnodes published an article stating that IEOs had raised over $3 billion in 2019 thus far:

More than three billion has been raised this year through tokens, including more than one billion in Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). A report by PwC and the Crypto Valley Association states 250 token offerings have been successfully completed this year up to May 2019.

Yes, you read that correctly. $3 billion.

The average IEO asks for just over $5 million per project! Many of these projects fail to even yield a positive return on investment (ROI).

And worse yet, no IEO that has been offered to the general public comes with the promise of dividends for those that have invested in the project.

In fact, quite the opposite, these IEOs promise absolutely nothing for investors! They don’t come with any risk disclosures and many of them break international securities laws in just about every single jurisdiction that has them.

This isn’t even mentioning the lack of KYC that these projects often fail to do.

So why the microscope-like focus on Zerononcense? And why, in a context where projects are raising $5+ million at a whim, is Zerononcense being singled out as raising a ‘whopping’ $1 million? This is confusing and the text of the article clearly predisposes the reader to have a negative opinion of Zerononcense and its offering.

But let’s continue to give Priya the benefit of the doubt for the time being and move on to dissect the other outlandish and outrageous claims that are made in her salacious, inaccurate hit piece.

Minimum Contribution Adjustment

When establishing a company (legal entity), there are a fixed number of shares that one can ‘order’ with the company (Delaware is our jurisdiction).

Originally, when the offering was created, there were 10,000 shares that were created, which means that the lowest offering amount (that we were willing to go with) was $500 in order to create an even 10,000 shares for a $5 million valuation to match the offer of $1 million for 20%.

However, since we’ve adjusted the offer lower amidst some criticism and to ensure that investors could get a larger portion of the company, the new offer is $1 million for 40% (or approximately double what we were offering last time).

This is a major difference and, because of this, we were forced to adjust the minimum contribution. Thus, when the offering was put out, there was a slight adjustment to the offering details to reflect this (double the offering given means double the minimum investment).

However, due to confusion from individuals pointing out the discrepancy, we decided to keep it at $500 in order to avoid any further angst or uncertainty among investors.

Overall, this is a fairly minor point of contention in the grand scheme of an offering that seeks to raise $1 million (i.e., debating whether $1,000 or $500 will be the minimum). Any individual contributing the minimum will only be able to afford themselves 0.01% of Zerononcense’s total equity.

What does the phrase, ‘adding icing to the cake’, mean? These are simply endeavors that Zerononcense is looking to go on.

However, we won’t belabor any points about the curiously pointed semantics used throughout the AMBCrypto piece. Instead, we’re going to go ahead and focus squarely on the next part of the article, which focuses on Monero — and grossly and inaccurately characterizes Zerononcense’s relationship with this entity.

Monero Relationship Mischaracterized by AMBCrypto

Let’s be clear when stating that what Riccardo Spagni said, is absolutely correct.

There is no partnership with Monero in the same way that no one can partner with Bitcoin.

Monero is a decentralized blockchain technology and, thus, there is no way for anyone to be ‘partnered’ with Monero in any traditional sense.

This is something that was stated directly to Priya while she was interviewing Zerononcense to gather more information for her article.

So why would Priya contact the ‘boss’ of Monero in order to validate information that was never conveyed to her by Zerononcense in the first place?

At the very least, this is shoddy journalism. At worst, there is malicious intent behind the negligence of Priya in compiling this hit piece.

The clear intent here in juxtaposing the statements of Riccardo Spagni with Zerononcense’s offering (which was grossly misrepresented) was to provide the impression that Zerononcense had told individuals that they had a genuine partnership in a traditional sense with Monero — which couldn’t be more inaccurate. And Priya’s failure to acknowledge this in a more holistic manner is just another example of the piss poor quality of journalism in this piece, which Zerononcense stands in starch opposition to.

Let’s move forward though, shall we?

War Between Zerononcense and Ziliak

Damn it, we said earlier in this piece that we weren’t going to jump in the fray with this unprofessional law firm in this article, but it appears that Priya has pulled us squarely into it — so let’s put on our boxing gloves for a moment.

To her credit, Priya does include some of the information that was given to her. However, she misses the most important part!

We sent Priya the actual retainer document that was given to Zerononcense by Ziliak!

This retainer is a signed agreement that immediately debunks the claims made by Olta Andoni stating that there is no ‘representation’ between Zerononcense and Ziliak.

In fact, it makes Olta’s claims pure slander, if anything.

Below is a copy of said retainer agreement for any readers that would like to take a look:

This document, itself, trumps and supercedes any of the other claims that have been made by Olta Andoni!

Furthermore, the actual owner of the law firm reached out to Zerononcense earlier to ask for confirmation on whether Ziliak was representing Zerononcense or not just 24–48 hours ago after Olta Andoni made her false statement on social media! (see below)

As one can see in the picture above, the e-mail address that is making contact with Zerononcense is none other than ‘zachary@ziliak.com’, the head honcho himself.

So, given the information presented above as well as that in Priya’s article, why is there any debate over whether Zerononcense ‘misrepresented’ its relationship with Ziliak? It appears that this is not the case. Not only that, it seems that we’ve seen.

Claims That a Legal Agreement Was Never Reached

This statement above that says,

“While there is retainer proof that there has been communication between two parties involved, a legally binding agreement was never understood between the two.”

Huh?

Zeronocense put up an invoice showing that $5,000 had been paid to Ziliak as a down payment for its legal services(see below):

In what universe does a law firm accept $5,000 for legal services without any legal framework behind said services?

Furthermore, if there was no agreement between Ziliak and Zerononcense, why were they sending Zerononcense a slew of legal documents for the offering such as the ones that you see in the picture below?:

Conclusion

Sometimes the truth, which is laden throughout this article, is stranger than fiction, such as the fictitious publishing of AMBCrypto.

While many in the crypto space have swarmed around the salacious claims of ‘scam’, ‘fraud’, and other unsupported allegations against Zerononcense in an effort to get more clicks/likes/mentions/attention, this article (among others that will eventually be posted), proves without equivocation that said claims are largely and, in most cases, completely, false.